Tag Archives: Old World Wisconsin

Unknown's avatar

Exteriors

by

Another day at the living history museum under my belt.  The new thing I did today was make rhubarb sauce from the gigantic rhubarb plants in the garden.  Not that I actually ate any, I just boiled it in water on the wood stove for a few hours so that the smell would permeate the summer kitchen.  I didn’t have any sugar at first, so my initial taste was very sour!  It reminded me of my mom making rhubarb and custard from the rhubarb in our garden.  My mother didn’t garden a lot, so this was impressive to me.   I know she helped her parents with a “Victory Garden” during WWII, but she was pretty young.   She shops at farmer’s markets and does delicious things with fresh produce, but she doesn’t grow it herself.  I’m looking forward to more garden-to-table assignments. 

I love that this job allows me to be outside so much.  We had thunderclouds overhead for much of the day, but no rain.  The humidity was high, but there was a breeze kicking up from the storm front miles away.  And I noticed a fishy smell first thing today…I guess with storm conditions you can smell Lake Michigan from 50 miles away?!  Unless there’s another explanation.  Anyway, I thought I’d share some photos I took of outbuildings and such. 

The blacksmith shop with St. Peter’s in the background.

When “nature calls”, you can head for the woods…

…or use the 3-holer out by the garden. Good idea planting the fragrant lilacs right beside it!

As you can tell, I’ve got a fabulous work environment!  I’m loving this job.  🙂

 

 

Unknown's avatar

Opening Day

by

May Day!  The first day of the season for Old World Wisconsin.  We were open to the public as well as conducting school tours.  In the German area, there was only one school of 68 students that came through.  In the Crossroads Village, they had 3 tours with students from 4 schools, one of which was a group of 8th graders from France.  I also had a single adult visitor, an adult couple, and a family with 3 children from Arizona come by.   In other words….PEOPLE.   Real, live people with stories and questions and backgrounds making connections.  This is living history, after all.  And I love it!  I had so much fun with the 3 kids from Arizona who shaped dough and pounded the froe to chop kindling, and smiled and talked the whole time.  They were enjoying themselves, and their parents were snapping pictures and asking questions.  They were learning and engaging in a very comfortable way…they were homeschooling.  I really like the small group interaction involved:  3 adults, 3 kids.  Very nice.  Somehow, when it’s a group of 21 kids and 3 chaperones, there’s almost more crowd control going on than learning.   Or so it appears.  I hope they learned something; I hope they were listening and paying attention to more than just their classmates and the instructions the chaperones were giving. 

So all of that went on in about an hour…and I had several more to kill.  The great thing is that I don’t feel any pressure to be super productive the whole time.  I chopped wood and carried water and washed dishes and tended the fire and sewed on my pin cushion and all of that good stuff, but then I sat down on the porch and watched a thirteen-striped ground squirrel scurry around the yard near the woodpile snarfing up dandelion seeds.  Just quietly, listening to the birds.  Minutes went by.  I felt the land around me and thought about the sense of time and energy that a tree feels when it’s “busy” growing.  The woods, the fields, the garden…they are living under the sky at a pace that is so different from us movers and shakers.  They feel the air, the light changes, rain falls, things happen and they respond, but they don’t “react”.  I want to learn more about that way of life.  How long can you “not react”?  It’s like practicing meditation.  Breathe and be.  Light changes, form changes.  Breathe and be.  Everything changes.  Breathe and be.  I think that’s what I’m learning from nature.  I am very happy to be spending more time outdoors.   

 

Unknown's avatar

Home and Hearth

by

I’m anticipating the arrival of my middle daughter for a sleep over visit.  I have done the dishes, swept and mopped the kitchen floor, changed the sheets and made the bed.  My 21st century house is maybe about 75 years old.  The houses I help keep up at my Old World Wisconsin job are about 135 years old.  What remains constant about hospitality?  The desire to provide a degree of comfort out of respect for another person.  The pride of being able to offer, no matter how humble, an invitation to share what you have with another person, be it space, warmth, food, shelter, peace or love.  “For it is in giving that you shall receive.”

 

I am enjoying a sense of maturity in my ideas about homemaking, a sense of seasoning.  As a young wife and mother, I was extremely anxious about entertaining.  I felt that everyone who walked through my front door was judging me.  I was sure that I wasn’t doing things the “right” way and that everyone could tell that I was faking being a “good” mother.  I hardly ever had the sense that people who visited me were actually interested in enjoying time with me.  I suppose you could just label that “low self-esteem”.  So what does self-esteem have to do with hospitality?  Perhaps it’s simply that until you esteem yourself, it’s hard to know how to esteem someone else, or until you know how to be comfortable in your own skin, it’s hard to know how to help another person be comfortable in his or hers.  That’s what I want to be able to offer my guests: a place where they can be at peace with themselves, with me, and with their surroundings.  A place to experience welcome and contentment —  home and hearth.     

Unknown's avatar

Old School

by

“Please excuse Priscilla’s absence from the blogosphere yesterday.  Her make-up work will be completed on time.”  Signed by my mother.  Do I need an excuse?  I was tired.  The week of training is now complete.  We are ready to open on May 1st.  Here are some shots to whet your appetite; I promise that I will be posting more anecdotes and photos from my new job at Old World Wisconsin.  Imagine filling up your tank with gasoline while dressed in 19th century clothing…and then going inside and asking to use the rest room.  Imagine stopping by the post office on your way home from work dressed like this as well.  Yes, we did these things.  So far no one has asked for an explanation.  In the case of the Postal employees, they know us really well and we’ve been talking about this for weeks.  They were thrilled.  As for the gas station, it was one in the same town, so I’m sure they’re used to costumed customers.  Oh, I should tell you that I’ve decided to drop the poetry challenge.  I really enjoyed the challenge when I had more free time, now it seems like an obligation that I don’t want to fulfill.  So, thanks for the good time, NaPoWriMo, but I’m moving on!

This one's for Helen because she wanted to see my corset!

Me & Steve in full garb. I have a different outfit for weekends when I am in the village church. This is my farm wife costume.

This is the bake house or summer kitchen where I will be teaching kids to knead dough while talking to them about life on the farm.

More to come, friends.  I now need to spend some time cleaning my 21st century house in preparation for a visit from my middle daughter tomorrow!

Unknown's avatar

Field Trips

by

Today was another great day of training at Old World Wisconsin.  School groups are coming tomorrow!  Today I learned how to use a wood burning stove.  I made a fire in both the stove and the bake oven and made coffee and creamed bratwurst on the stove.  The rest of the crew from the German area came over for lunch bringing fried potatoes and caramelized turnips to complete our lunch.  It was so satisfying to play hostess knowing that I’m beginning to truly feel at home in that way of life.  I offered tin cups of hot coffee to the menfolk, and chairs to the most senior members of the group.  I swept the floor after everyone left, did the dishes, and then had about an hour completely on my own to read up on the history of the buildings and to begin to darn some wool socks.   When I returned to the training facility at the end of the day, my costumes were ready for me to try on.  I have one for my role in the farmhouse and one for my role as the organist at the Catholic Church in the village.  I get to wear a hooped bustle and a fancy hat with a hatpin for that one! 

I feel like I’m being paid to cook over a campfire…I usually have to pay for that privilege!  I need to practice up on my school group presentation for tomorrow.  No poetry tonight, sorry!

Unknown's avatar

Inheriting a Homestead

by

I spent several hours today in the homestead that I will demonstrate and interpret for visitors to Old World Wisconsin.  Tomorrow I will learn to light a fire in the cookstove and the bake oven and actually cook something.   The house and land was purchased by Adam Schottler, an immigrant from southern Germany who had a larger farm nearby.  He rented the house out until his son Matthias was married, and then he gave his son and daughter-in-law the property.   The Wisconsin Historical Society acquired the house and a few other buildings from the period, and assembled them together to form a homestead for the museum.  The restoration date targeted is 1875.  At that time, Matthias and Caroline Schottler had 2 children.  They had 11 children total during their marriage.  Here’s a photo that shows the zigzag fence, the granary and pig pen, the barn, the summer kitchen (or bake house), and behind it, the house.  The granary, summer kitchen, and house are all one behind the other in this photo, so you can’t see much of them.  The wooden crossbar frame standing outside is for butchering hogs (which we’ll do in the fall).  The green field in the background is planted with rye.  I am supposedly going to help make a rye straw basket, and to raise dough in it for rye bread, which I will bake in the bake kitchen oven…an oven that holds 24 loaves at a time!

 

I will also be busying myself chopping wood and gardening in order to prepare food in that summer kitchen.  Today I saw rhubarb and asparagus and currents and thyme and sage and rosemary and lemon balm and dill and horseradish already growing in the garden.  All of this produce is to be used on site during the season.  I don’t get to take any home, but I do get to help use it.  I have been wanting to learn more about how to “live off the land” for a while now, and this is going to be a great introduction, I think. 

Right now I’m learning all kinds of logistics to interpreting this area for school groups beginning a week from today, but I think of the feel of the sun on my cheeks and the 13-stripe ground squirrel that peeked into the kitchen today, and I imagine moments that I will have simply soaking up the homesteading life, pondering the way of a woman who worked hard, raised 11 children, and knew the land around her intimately.   What will I learn from her?  What appreciation and meaning will take root inside me?  Gratitude, a sense of life rooted and grounded, a hope for my own children to live honestly in the simple abundance of the earth?  It’s a connection that I’m eager to explore.

I apologize for leaving out a poetry challenge for today, but I am too sunburned and tired to concentrate on that today.  Tomorrow I have another early day out at the site.   I am looking forward to sleep!  And to getting my costume….more to come!

Unknown's avatar

Dodging Art

by

What an amazing day!  Training at Old World Wisconsin included visits to the Animal Barn, the Garden curator, and the Collections curator.  I met two oxen, each weighing a ton, and stroked their noses and chins.  I was introduced to three horses who are each in their 90s in “people years”.  I saw a sow who had given birth for the first time just this week and her seven pink little piglets.   Oh, how their little faces captivated me (and made me wish I’d brought my camera)!  I visited a greenhouse full of tiny sprouting seeds which will become food and decor to an entire community, a future rooted in the present and informed by the past.  I browsed through shelves of antique artifacts that illustrate the lives and time of people whose stories encompass miles of external and internal territory.  So much to take in, visually, mentally, physically and spiritually!  I came home to my usual tasks of dinner and chores and a phone call from my darling youngest…and now I’m sitting at my computer and entering this century of technology for the first time today.  It feels kinda weird!  I can only imagine how this feeling will intensify as I spend more time in the Old World. 

I have one more week of the poetry challenge from NaPoWriMo to complete, and already I can tell that it’s not going to be easy to be in the mood to concentrate on composing verse each day after training!  Still, I hope to have a little time to dabble in the word pond.  Today’s prompt is to write an “ekphrastic” poem, a graphic description of a work of art.  “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a famous one.  I went through some art photos that I had collected for a game I invented, and this one caught my eye.  It’s a self-portrait by Van Gogh.  Here’s the picture and the poem, and then I think I’ll call it a day here in the 21st century and get ready to go back 150 years again tomorrow!

Freckled, wistful world

Speckled, swirling molecules

Boundaries camouflaged

Fits and bits punctuating disappearance

Addled, dappled, sparks in the dark

Furtive sideways glance to the canvas

Back to dabbing, daubing, repetition

Poking at the flat reality

Testing the surface, then

Bouncing off again

Unknown's avatar

Don’t Fence Me In

by

The maple trees have already stopped running sap.  The wildflowers have begun to bloom.  It’s like we’ve gone past spring in a flash and gotten into early summer already.  The temperatures have hit record highs all this week.  How can you not be outside on a day like today?!  Well, that’s where I’m heading.  First, I’ll share some more architectural shots from my Old World Wisconsin trek.

What are you doing inside still?!  Go out and enjoy the world!

Unknown's avatar

Old World Windows

by

I am borrowing this post theme from a blogger in the UK, a very artistic (and witty!) photographer whose post you can find here.  His windows are truly Old World, mine are from my visit to Old World Wisconsin yesterday.  It was a fabulous day for being outside, and I will post more photos throughout the weekend from that trip.  Here is my rebuttal to Microsoft:

Enjoy your Friday, folks!